Tugade wants Clark airport rehab privatized

MANILA, Philippines – Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade wants the private sector to handle the rehabilitation of Clark International Airport by 2017.

During the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) General Membership Meeting in Makati City on Tuesday, August 30, Tugade said he wants to transfer the upgrade works of the airport from state-run Clark International Airport Corporation (CIAC) to private investors.

“Clark airport has to be addressed by improving the facilities there. Additional equipment, some are no longer operable. We have to work out the terminal operations,” transportation chief said in front of MAP business community.

“I have proposed that it should be done by private [sector]. It should be done in the next 10 months or so,” Tugade added.

The old Aeroports de Paris plan

During the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III, CIAC was supposed to auction off the first phase of a plan by Aeroports de Paris to increase its passenger capacity to 8 million in 2017 from the current 5 million.

Based on a master plan by the French company, the development of the Clark airport will involve a P7.2-billion effort to increase capacity to 80 million passengers annually by 2032.

The airport currently hosts carriers such as Dragonair, Asiana Airlines, Cebu Pacific, Seair, Qatar Airways, Tigerair, Jin Air, and AirAsia.

During the previous administration, the Clark airport rehab was the PPP pipeline.

Clark International Airport currently has two 3,200-meter parallel runways, one of which will be extended to 4,000 meters to accommodate new generation wide-body aircraft.

The primary runway is 3,200 meters long and 60 meters wide, while the secondary runway is the same length but is 45 meters wide. 

“It could be PPP or through unsolicited proposal. [It’s] too early to tell. We are just in our 2nd month,” the transportation chief said on the sidelines of the event.

To support the development of Clark airport as a main international gateway, Tugade said his department plans to build a standard train that will connect passengers from Manila to Clark International Airport.

Tugade said his department will provide connectivity using a standard train or a connector road.

To help decongest Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), Tugade had asked businessmen Lucio Tan and Lance Gokongwei to move their helicopters out of NAIA and transfer these to Clark. – Rappler.com